SEASON IN REVIEW
Abbeville, South Carolina driver Curtis “Crawfish” Crider picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1963, scoring four last-place finishes in forty-nine starts during the fifty-five-race season.
Crider was another of NASCAR’s prolific owner-drivers of the 1960s, having run the majority of his 232 career starts in his own equipment. The 1963 season was his fifth on the Cup Series tour, and Crider entered it coming off of his best year to that date, racking up three Top Fives and 18 Top Tens in 1962.
The first of Crider’s four last-place finishes in 1963 came in the February 24 running of the Daytona 500 in Daytona Beach, Florida. On the day that DeWayne “Tiny” Lund pulled off his dramatic upset for the Wood Brothers, Crider overheated four laps into the race and came home 50th. That day, Crider was driving his self-prepared #62 1962 Mercury, a number and manufacturer that he campaigned for much of his career, including all but six of his starts in 1963.
The next two last-place finishes came in consecutive races that summer. The first of those two came on May 19 in Richmond, Virginia’s Southside Speedway during his only start that season for owner Cliff Stewart. Stewart’s team hired Crider as one of several drivers that season, including Buddy Baker, Jimmy Pardue, Jim Paschal, Larry Thomas, and was one of the nine teams that Joe Weatherly raced for en route to his 1963 NASCAR Cup Championship. Crider qualified 9th in Stewart’s #2 1962 Pontiac, but burned the clutch after 93 laps and finished last.
The third finish came in the fourth annual World 600 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina on June 2. That day, Crider was back in his own equipment, this time running a current 1963 model Mercury, but he withdrew from the event after just two laps, coming home 44th.
The fourth finish came on July 4 in the Firecracker 400, making Crider the first NASCAR driver ever to finish last in both points races at Daytona in the same season. This time, an engine failure was the listed cause, knocking Crider’s 1962 Mercury out of the running after four laps.
Although Crider struggled in 1963, finishing 17th in points after a 12th-place showing in 1962, he rebounded in 1964 to have the best season of his career, scoring seven Top Fives and thirty Top Tens in fifty-nine starts, earning him the sixth spot in the final points standings. He also equaled his career-best finish of 3rd that season, trailing Hall of Fame drivers Richard Petty and Ned Jarrett at the Harris Speedway in Harris, North Carolina on October 25, 1964.
Crider made just three Cup starts after that in 1965 before he ended his NASCAR career in his 232nd series start. He passed away at age 82 on December 21, 2012.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
Curiously, 1963 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Joe Weatherly also scored three last-place finishes that year, coming just one finish short of tying Crider’s mark. It was one of the only times where a driver was in position to claim both the NASCAR and LASTCAR titles in the same season.
A handful of other notable names scored their first last-place finishes in 1963.
Wendell Scott, to date NASCAR’s only African-American race winner, finished last for the first time on March 10 when his self-prepared #34 1961 Chevrolet broke an axle ten laps into the race at Orange Speedway in Hillsboro, North Carolina.
The 1970 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Bobby Isaac scored his first on July 7 at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Isaac qualified on the outside-pole and led the firs thirty laps in his #99 Bondy Long 1963 Ford before the engine let go, setting a record for most laps led by a Cup Series last-placer.
Finally, owner-driver J.D. McDuffie finished last in the July 30 race at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in Greenville, South Carolina when his #76 1961 Ford crashed after the opening lap. Less than two decades later, McDuffie would take the overall lead in the LASTCAR Cup Series standings.
During another running of the small cars’ race at Bowman-Gray Stadium on August 16, a Chevrolet Corvette scored its only recorded last-place finish in NASCAR history. Driver Bill Whitley crashed his #17X after the opening lap after starting last in the 19-car field.
On September 22, Jimmy Massey scored his first Cup Series last-place finish in Martinsville, Virginia as the driver of Richard Petty’s #43 1963 Plymouth. Massey was involved in an opening-lap crash with Jimmy Pardue and didn’t return to the race. Petty drove Petty Engineering’s #41 to a fifth-place finish behind race winner Fred Lorenzen.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Curtis Crider (4)
2nd) Junior Johnson, Roy Mayne, Joe Weatherly (3)
3rd) Possum Jones, Jimmy Pardue, Wendell Scott, G.C. Spencer, E.J. Trivette, Roy Tyner, Bill Whitley (2)
4th) Johnny Allen, Buck Baker, Neil Castles, Doug Cooper, Tom Cox, Lloyd Dane, Sam Fogle, Cotton Hodge, Chuck Huckabee, Bobby Isaac, Ned Jarrett, Elmo Langley, Tiny Lund, Larry Manning, Jimmy Massey, J.D. McDuffie, Major Melton, Dominic Persicketti, Richard Petty, Jack Smith, Al Terrell, Larry Thomas, Billy Wade, Jerome Warren, Rex White, Bill Widenhouse, Bruce Worrell, Emanuel Zervakis (1)
